Can You Freeze Potato Cakes? Yes, Here’s The Process To Freeze Potato Cakes

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Can You Freeze Potato Cakes?: Whether you prepared mashed potatoes with garlic bread over the weekend or whether you took a shot at mimicking McDonald’s legendary hashbrowns, making potato cakes is your direct pass to another delectable dish with the bonus of using all the potatoes so that they don’t go to waste.

But, there will be times when you’d simply want to make potato cakes for later use. What then? So, the question really is, can you freeze potato cakes and preserve them for longer? This article will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you can freeze potato cakes and if you can, what the best way to go about it.

Can You Freeze Potato Cakes

Can You Freeze Potato Cakes?

If you wanted a short and sweet answer, we’d tell you that you can freeze potato cakes and this blog would end right here. But we know that you’re here for the long answer. So, let’s get on with it. You can freeze potato cakes. And like we said before, freezing potato cakes is a very sustainable manner of dealing with leftover potatoes and preparing a future potato-based recipe.

Now, while typically, potato cakes can be preserved safely for up to 3 months when frozen the right way, that number might reduce if there are other ingredients mixed with the potatoes.

How To Freeze Potato Cakes?

We know that freezing potato cakes are a viable option for your kitchen. But, how do you go about it? The following bit of this blog will give you detailed instructions about how you should be freezing potato cakes for optimal results.

To get started, you will need to ensure that you have access to baking sheets, parchments of paper, and of course, a container that can withstand the temperatures inside a freezer.

  • Prepare the potato cakes: The first step is to gather up all the leftover potatoes, mash them into one blob of potato and divide them into biscuit-shaped cakes. It doesn’t particularly matter if there are added ingredients in the mixture unless you want to be storing and freezing them for more than 2 months. If, however, you are looking for a shelf life of over 2 months, it would be wise to separate the plain potatoes and potatoes with extra ingredients into different containers.
  • Cook the potatoes first and then cool them down: After you’ve prepared the potato cakes, cook them. Once the cakes are cooked, transfer them onto a cooling rack till the cakes return to their normal temperature. You cannot move on to the next step until the cakes have cooled down entirely.
  • Place them over the baking sheets: Do you remember the baking sheets we asked you to keep handy? This is where they come into the picture. Do make sure that your baking sheets are compatible with storing in your freezer. Now, spread out the parchment onto the baking sheets in order to cover them entirely.

After you’ve done that, place the potato cakes on the parchment. You will have to take extra care that the potato cakes don’t touch each other at all. And now simply place these sheets, undisturbed, into the freezer for a couple of hours.

  • Cut more parchment while the cakes freeze: While the cakes are in the freezer for a few hours, you should get started on cutting up parchment into pieces such that they are a little larger than the potato cakes. This can take a fair bit of time and patience. But, it is a step that is crucial to freezing potato cakes for the long term.
  • Stack the potato cakes: And finally, the penultimate step to freezing your potato cakes – take the potato cakes out of the freezer, and begin stacking them vertically, or horizontally, based on the space in your freezer, and place a parchment cut out between each cake. This nifty little trick will ensure that when you take the potato cakes out of the freezer after a week or two, they won’t have stuck to each other.
  • Bag the stacks: Ideally, you should use an airtight ziplock bag or an airtight refrigerator-proof container to store the stacks of potato cakes. Once you’ve managed to fit all the cakes into bags or containers, you simply need to leave them in the freezer until such time that you want to use them again!

How Long Can You Freeze Potato Cakes?

As a rule, you can expect your potato cakes to remain edible for up to 3 months when frozen properly. If the potato cakes are made of only potatoes and nothing else then that number could go as high as 5 months. But, in the event that there are other ingredients mixed with the potatoes, the cakes’ shelf life could be lower than 3 months.

One thing you are bound to appreciate is the versatility and utility of freezing potato cakes. It’s a practice that will ensure that you always have a delicious potato preparation almost ready and also give you the peace of knowing that you’re not wasting leftovers.

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How To Defrost Frozen Potato Cakes?

Obviously now that you’ve frozen them, you will need to understand the proper way to defrost them before you can actually eat them. It’s not a difficult process at all really. Depending on how you want to finally cook the potato cakes, one of the safest ways to defrost them is to transfer them from the freezer into a plate in the refrigerator.

Alternatively, you could also directly shallow fry them for a crispy exterior and a fairly soft interior. If you want to make a lovely potato salad with creamy dressings, you can even use frozen potato cakes directly. You could also simply take them out of the freezer and put them in a grill without worrying about defrosting them.

Tips And Tricks To Follow While Freezing Potato Cakes

  • If your goal is to increase the shelf life of your potato cakes, it’s best to freeze potatoes that don’t have any other ingredients mixed with them. However, if you want to make your next preparation quicker and easier, then potato cakes that have spices and ingredients mixed in them are a better option.
  • Whether you use a ziplock or a borosil container, you must make sure that the container is completely air-tight and that it can withstand the sub-zero temperatures of the freezer.
  • Placing the potato cakes in horizontal lines in ziplocks will make the entire storage process a little easier while also reducing the chances of breakage of the potato cakes in storage.

Can You Refreeze Potato Cakes?

Bear in mind that potato cakes are basically cooked potatoes that have been frozen. Therefore, the process of thawing them out and then refreezing them is unlikely to leave them suitable for eating.

Moreover, on the off-chance that the potato cakes survive the process of refreezing after already having thawed them once, they are bound to be brittle, chunky, and all in all, unsavory. Therefore, it is best to avoid refreezing potato cakes.

for more varieties of cakes such as pancakes and their batter do refer to the article Can You Freeze Pancake Batter and resolve your concerns.

FAQs on Freezing Potato Cakes

1. Can you buy frozen potato cakes?

No, you cannot buy frozen potato cakes. These aren’t really products that are sold in any market. Rather, they are just an effective manner of using up all potato leftovers instead of letting them go waste in the dustbin.

2. Can you make burger patties using potato cakes?

You can certainly use frozen potato cakes as burger patties. One of the best ways to do that is to ensure that the potato cakes have spices and herbs mixed in them at the time of freezing. When you want to dig into a burger, simply take the frozen potato cakes out of the freezer, shallow fry them on medium heat, and place it between two burger buns!

3. Do potato cakes freeze well?

Yes, potato cakes do freeze well. The only issue that could crop is sogginess upon thawing frozen potato cakes. But, the excess moisture can be eliminated by heating it for a longer period of time. Remember that sogginess is the enemy of a nice and crispy potato pattie.

Final Words

And that brings us to the end of the topic, ‘can you freeze potato cakes?’ Hopefully, we have managed to answer all your queries regarding the process of freezing and stacking potato cakes and then thawing them out when you want to prepare them. Bookmark our site for more details on articles like Can You Freeze Cheesecake, etc.

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